test, and the Light and Weak Ending
test.

I. The Speech-ending test has been used by Koenig,[284] and I will first
give some of his results. But I regret to say that I am unable to
discover certainly the rule he has gone by. He omits speeches which are
rhymed throughout, or which end with a rhymed couplet. And he counts
only speeches which are 'mehrzeilig.' I suppose this means that he
counts any speech consisting of two lines or more, but omits not only
one-line speeches, but speeches containing more than one line but less
than two; but I am not sure.

In the plays admitted by everyone to be early the percentage of speeches
ending with an incomplete line is quite small. In the _Comedy of
Errors_, for example, it is only 0.6. It advances to 12.1 in _King
John_, 18.3 in _Henry V._, and 21.6 in _As You Like It_. It rises
quickly soon after, and in no play written (according to general belief)
after about 1600 or 1601 is it less than 30. In the admittedly latest
plays it rises much higher, the figures being as follows:--_Antony_
77.5, _Cor._ 79, _Temp._ 84.5, _Cym._ 85, _Win. Tale_ 87.6, _Henry
VIII._ (parts assigned to Shakespeare by Spedding) 89. Going back, now,
to the four tragedies, we find the following figures: _Othello_ 41.4,
_Hamlet_ 51.6, _Lear_ 60.9, _Macbeth_ 77.2. These figures place
_Macbeth_ decidedly last, with a percentage practically equal to that of
_Antony_, the first of the final group.

I will now give my own figures for these tragedies, as they differ
somewhat from Koenig's, probably because my method differs. (1) I have
included speeches rhymed or ending with rhymes, mainly because I find
that Shakespeare will sometimes (in later plays) end a speech which is
partly rhymed with an incomplete line (_e.g. Ham._ III. ii. 187, and the
last words of the play: or _Macb._ V. i. 87, V. ii. 31). And if such
speeches are reckoned, as they surely must be (for they may be, and are,
highly significant), those speeches which end with complete rhymed lines
must also be reckoned. (2) I have counted any speech exceeding a line in
length, however little the excess may be; _e.g._

I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.
Give me my armour:

considering that the incomplete line here may be just as significant as
an incomplete line ending a longer speech. If a speech begins within a
line and ends brokenly, of course I have not counted it when it is
equivalent to a five-foot line; _e.g._